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It is interesting to hear how similar our situations are. Those pallet of returns type of places have become a lot more common than even 2 or 3 years ago. I can’t imagine there is much consistent profit left in it for anyone, except maybe Amazon, but I’m sure there are good ones out there.
I am in a very similar position to you in terms of sheer quantity of unlisted stuff, but I like having the backlog to “eat off of” as Jay would say. Sometimes those are the weeks where there’s nothing good to buy, and sometimes those are the cold Northeast winter days where the best way to spend the time is inside, creating a bunch of new listings!
One of the challenges when you’re building up an eBay store is how do you get to 100 listings and then 500 and then 1000. I think a lot of the people we see buying stuff as soon as it hits the shelves, or hustling the new listings on FB Marketplace, Mercari, etc are at the point in the cycle where they’re trying to figure how to sustain this thing they’ve been building. They need that next new item to list, or 20 new things to list, or the next $200 in their pocket. Technology has made it so easy to look up prices or list stuff, but it takes knowledge, patience and more than a little bit of luck to keep the sales steady over a long period of time, and no flipper tool or subscription fee can give you all of those things.
It can be so painful in the moment of cancelling those $100+ sales, but it’s always better to get through them as quickly as possible and onto the next sale.
I was thinking earlier this week about how few INADs and return cases I get — maybe 5 in all of 2021, and I sold 50+ items a week and some weeks as many as 100 items. My return rate is shockingly low compared to what a lot of people assume about eBay selling, especially considering that I sell cards where you would think buyers would be pickier and returns higher. But I think most sellers can reduce their return rate by focusing on 3 areas:
1. Be extremely critical about condition and very clear about describing any flaws in the condition notes and in the listing description, and in the title if possible. With most of the cards I sell (certainly anything $50 and up), I give them a once-over inspection while I’m creating the listing. Any major flaws get added to the end of the title, like this listing which I sold yesterday. This adds a few extra minutes to how long it takes me to list, but I have more confidence that a picky buyer will be satisfied because the description is more than just “see picture.”**
** Granting that “see picture” is good enough for many buyers and many items. With $20 and under listings, I focus more on speed than perfection. It’s rare that I miss a major flaw, but on the few occasions I have, I refund the buyer and tell them to keep the item. They’re usually thrilled, and I move on to something else that sells for more.
2. Package very carefully. As we all know, this seems like it should be obvious to any eBay sellers but anyone who’s used eBay has a story about crazy, terrible or crazy terrible packaging. What fascinates me in particular with card sellers (even ones with 100,000+ feedback) is how often they cheap out on the proper cases and packaging. Every card I sell gets shipped in a brand new case. I buy them in bulk quantity in all different sizes (for different thickness cards) a few times a year. Each case is a few cents extra cost on top of what I pay for the item, and those few cents add up over 2000 sales, but I’d rather make a little less profit and look more professional. I save that money in other ways anyway.
3. Accept any and all cancellations for any reasons. I also take returns for 30 days for any reason, but I can’t remember the last time a buyer actually returned an item. Usually they are thrilled with “my mistake, sorry, here’s a refund and please keep the item” and I’ve been able to send out a replacement or equivalent item on a few occasions.
I don’t know if any of this would work for drop shippers who are just competing on price or people who sell Iphones and electronic where there is a lot of potential for fraud and unscrupulous buyers. But for most sellers, I think this is how you can avoid most returns.
I have heard great things from friends about Red matter, No Man’s Sky and RE4. Not my types of games but if you like those kinds of games, all 3 sound like a lot of fun.
I played the ping pong game a little bit and it was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it. Very realistic. One of the mini golf games Walkabout was similar in terms of incredible realism.
One other game that I really loved was tilt brush which is VR painting. I found it to be very calming and soothing and I am not much of an artist with a canvas (or so I thought)
Wanted to bump this thread to the top with a rare 8% eBay bucks promo circulating for the next few days. Give the end and relist a try if you haven’t already!
Here is how I do my end and relists:
1. Sort all of my active listings from least watchers to most. I like to only relist items without any watchers, but in theory you can sort however you want.
2. End all of the items without watchers 200 at a time. In my 3000+ item store, this is about half of them.
3. Go to unsold listings and sort by price low to high. I like to sort before relisting them just to keep me a little more organized. Relist (or sell similar) 200 at a time. I’ve done both relist and sell similar in this manner, and I’m not sure that it matters which one you do.
Just for reference: I followed this process last night, and start to finish the whole thing took me less than 30 minutes. 5 of the relisted items have already sold in the first 24 hours, and 97 of them have watchers. I’m going to send a batch of 15% or 20% offers tomorrow to encourage some more sales.
I’m sure many of these items listings would eventually sell anyway, but my theory is that a subset of eBay users browse occasionally (every few days or less) and many of them sort by new or only look at new items in their saved searches. While the end and relist method is no substitute for listing new, good quality items, I believe this is one method of helping you reach those buyers, especially if you accept offers and are flexible on price. I would guess that the eBay algorithm is also happiest when sellers are active and regularly listing.
Even though most of my inventory is in cards, I feel pretty insulated from the ups and downs of the card market since so much of what I’m doing is more classic scavenging — finding the auctions that end lower than their “true value” (bad title or listing, bad timing with the sale, or just auctions being weird) and relisting buy it now/best offer, then waiting a few days or weeks or months for the right buyer and offer to find my listing.
The pandemic sports card bubble has burst by now. Cards aren’t sold out at Walmart and Target anymore. Grading companies no longer have months long backlogs. But that was all a weird product of a weird moment in time. I know a lot of sellers in a lot of different niches posted their best numbers in those first few months of the pandemic. I’m sure a lot of people also spent money on cards in that time hoping to get rich.
But almost anyone who had knowledge about modern cards before the bubble has made money in the last 18 months. There are more buyers now who are into cards for all different reasons — to make money buying and selling individual cards, for nostalgia or fandom reasons, for the thrill of the hunt (gambling basically), or because they found cards during the pandemic and were sucked in because cards are so different now than in the 80s or 90s.
This article explains it really well, I think.
I’ll use my recent sales from this weekend to illustrate some other examples. The football season is winding down to its last few weeks, and teams are competing to see who will make the playoffs and who will wait until next year. The Buffalo Bills won a key game this weekend over the Patriots, and a big reason was the career-best game from a pretty obscure player named Isaiah McKenzie. I sold four of his cards for $15 to $20 each within 24 hours of the game. I paid less than $5 for each of them, and still have a few more to list. I enjoy buying and selling players like McKenzie who aren’t the star player, and don’t have cards in every set. There are more buyers for the star quarterbacks and top rookies, and also dozens more different cards and varieties (called inserts or parallels).
This is one element of modern cards, but there are still collectors out there too. I sold a soccer card with autographs from two players on the Swedish team Malmo for $50 on the same day I listed it. No surprise that the card is going across the Atlantic to Sweden. I’m sure the buyer would have been happy to buy it at auction for $10 (or whatever I originally paid) but the original listing didn’t contain the team, and likely spelled at least one of the players names wrong since they have weird Swedish names. So my buyer was never going to find the card they wanted until there was a listing from someone who knew what they had. I also think some buyers are not constantly on eBay, and only search occasionally. In hindsight, maybe I could have listed the card for $60 or $70. But I’m happy to have the sale.
This is maybe the biggest change I’ve noticed in the last year, and the last few months especially. I am winning more and more auctions for lower prices than I would expect, and selling many of those bargains very quickly after listing them and optimizing the listing. To put it another way: there are a lot of people selling cards who don’t know what they have, or why it’s worth money, and many of the larger sellers (primarily who I buy from) can’t keep up with the volume of listings. So they make more mistakes, which is great for someone like me who is constantly searching for these bargains. The sports world is also constantly changing and card values follow that, to an extent, so you have to keep up.
I am very excited to see where my store will be at in a year. I can’t imagine selling cards forever, but it’s very profitable right now — and has been for many years, long before the pandemic — if you know what you’re looking for, and put in the time to find those bargains that slip through the cracks. I have been in the 3000 to 3500 listing range for the last few months, but I have hundreds and maybe thousands of valuable cards to list.
If you are ever interested in seeing the modern card market at work, every large card seller runs weekly auctions on eBay. This is nothing new. Every sport has dozens of new sets that come out every year, and eBay has been a huge element of card sales for 20+ years, so there has been a churn of buying and selling with cards for a very long time. Take a look at a few pages of the auction listings of a big card seller, like COMC, and you will see a lot of the different types of cards available and, if you watch the auctions end, which ones sell for $1, $10 and $100 and up. Do this on a few different nights and you’ll start to spot some patterns.
Once you have more than a passing of knowledge of cards, I think it’s somewhat easy to tell what’s valuable and what’s not. The player matters, and the timing of when you sell matters, and the relative scarcity of the card (often indicated with a serial number or “extra” to the card, like an autograph) matters. These things aren’t necessarily obvious and you might need some knowledge or expertise to understand them. But the difference between “luxury” modern cards and cheaper ones is fairly obvious to the naked eye, as long as you’re thinking about it in a more complex way than “just a card.”
PS – Those boxes at Walmart — known as “retail” versus the more lucrative (and expensive) boxes available at card shops and from manufacturers — are a sucker’s bet, and always have been. They are as likely to make you money as a candy bar is to make you feel full. Maybe once or twice a year, I will buy one or two boxes and reminisce. I don’t keep the cards though. Someone else will like them more.
I am in Southern NJ, just outside Philly, and have seen the opposite in my small town. In the last year, 3 thrift or consignment stores have opened in addition to the 2 that already existed.
One of them (a consignment clothing shop) must do some business online, and certainly uses it to promote their business a lot. The owner is extremely friendly and really passionate about the town and her business, so I’m rooting for her to succeed.
One of the thrift stores seems like a pretty middle-of-the-road thrift store — nothing too expensive or cheap, nothing I was interested in the few times I was there. I would think that most thrift stores in this situation, independent from a church or non-profit, close within a few years unless they adapt or change.
The third store, I’m not sure what their deal is. They are only open for a few hours a day 3 days a week. All their stuff is extremely overpriced and the owners aren’t friendly — as in, didn’t speak to me or even acknowledge me the one time I went to the store, even though there were no other customers and the store is very small. I can’t see how that business even makes enough money to cover commercial rent, let alone turn a profit, but I think some thrift stores exist for other reasons beyond selling second-hand goods.
The existing stores in town are more established: a consignment clothing shop that has its built-in clientele, even though the owner isn’t the friendliest, and a church basement thrift store which is staffed by blue-haired old ladies and most things are very inexpensive. I haven’t been there since before the pandemic since the space is so cramped, but I ought to drop off some donations there soon if nothing else.
It will be interesting to revisit this post in a year or two and see how things have changed for these businesses. I’m not sure if my Small Town, NJ is representative of Small Town, USA or not. But I’m grateful to think about how different my town was just a few years ago, and how it’s becoming more of a place that feels like home.
So happy to see you and the family are doing well. I’ve played in the Oculus Quest a handful of times, and I’m not a huge video game person, but I enjoyed my time with it anyway. My favorite games were:
Beat Saber, which is a fun workout game which is also very customizable if you download certain modsKeep Talking and No One Explodes, a co-op puzzle game
Both of the mini golf games (Walkabout and TopGolf)
There are a lot of other games I tried and enjoyed a few times or would have enjoyed if I was more of a regular gamer. I would also recommend looking into some of the accessories which make the quest more comfortable to wear. They made a huge difference in my enjoyment of the system and being able to play for longer than about 30 minutes without getting a headache.
I love seeing the unusual media items that you find for pennies, and sell for such impressive prices. It’s made me very excited to get back out there to library sales in the New Year for the first time since before the pandemic. Nothing like the true scavenging of digging through a box of CDs, computer games or books to find those obscure gems, and doing the research to find their true value.
I’ve had a laser focus these last few weeks on consolidating and organizing lower cost inventory, especially $20 and under items. It’s been extremely time consuming, definitely cleaned up my eBay room quite a bit, and made me a few extra bucks. Maybe the details merit a separate post. But I’ve been a slacker on posting my weekly numbers and need to keep up that accountability first and foremost in the new year.
12/19/2021 – 12/25/2021
Total items in store: 3345 (up from 3029 — but it’s been three weeks since I posted my weekly numbers, and a lot of this increase is from relisting old inventory, not brand new listings)
Items sold: 47 (32 via best offer, 12 via seller initiated offer, 0 repeat buyers)
Gross sales: $1724.83 (up 31% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1220.85 (up 41% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $6.17 — Sammy White autograph
I sell a handful of autographed cards like this one every single week — a card made recently, but the card is very plain and basically only a vessel for the professionally authenticated signature, rather than more expensive modern cards which are valuable for the player, design or set type. These types of autographed sets don’t feature current players (since producing cards of contemporary players requires expensive licensing that’s only available to a few select card manufacturers) and most of the players in the sets are nondescript since buying their autographs is cheaper.
I built up my store inventory from less than 500 listings to over 1000 with items like this — buy them for $5 or less and sell them for $10-$20. I don’t seek them out like I used to because they’re just not that profitable, but I like selling them because the buyers often fall into one of two groups:
1. A relative of the player (usually their grandfather or something like that) and they want to share this with someone, so they’ll mention it in a feedback or send a message thanking me for the item. Those are some of the best moments of selling on eBay.
2. Collectors who focus on a specific team, like this buyer who has probably bought 20+ similar autographs from me over the last few years. Because I package with a lot of care, these buyers are often buy from me again as long as I’m willing to negotiate. One sale with $5 profit doesn’t do much, but a few of those every week starts to add up. Especially in those slower weeks.
Highest price sold (net): $149.26 — RJ Barrett autograph /2 with inscription
This sale was quite the adventure. RJ Barrett is one of the young stars on the New York Knicks, and this card is from the year he was drafted, which is why he’s pictured in his college jersey, not his Knicks jersey. The autograph inscription is a reference to the fans of his college team, the Duke Blue Devils, and I can see why someone would pay a few bucks for this card in particular. I originally won the card at auction a few months ago for just under $50. I have been fortunate to purchase more and more items in this price range over the last year, and I’m excited to see what effect that has on my sales in 2022.
This Barrett card sold the same day I listed it for my full asking price of $199.99, and the buyer paid immediately which is a real specific thrill to selling on eBay. Then, 20 minutes later, they sent a message requesting a refund because they purchased the item by mistake.
Years ago, before I found this podcast, this would have ruined my day. I would have been angry, sad, maybe even sent an argumentative message back to the buyer. I’m sure I might have lost some motivation to list after that, especially since there’s a day lag with managed payments. The refund wiped out an entire day’s profits and I didn’t receive the money from the “sale” until 3 days later since this all happened on a Friday.
But I know the way now. I sent the refund. I sent zero messages to the buyer. I listed a few other cards later that night, and of course one or two of them sold within 24 hours because quality items sell when you create new listings with good prices. Then I relisted this Barrett card, and later that night it received an offer which (after some negotiating) led to a sale the next day. This time the buyer paid and didn’t cancel. Everything always works out.
Happy holidays and merry New Year’s to all my fellow scavengers. 2022 is going to be a great year for us. Part of the scavenger mentality is adapting and changing, especially in times of uncertainty and change.
I have gotten a bit of a wild hair up my butt about organizing and repricing inventory over the last few weeks. I think because end of the year is approaching, but my store has also grown by over 1000 listings in the last year, with many more to be listed and bulk peripheral items (supplies, shipping supplies, etc) taking up even more space. All in all, it’s starting to push the physical limit of one apartment bedroom. I have already put a lot of work in over the last few weeks organizing and consolidating, but there is plenty more to do if I want to follow through with one of my goals for next year which is to expand beyond the trading cards niche.
11/28/2021 – 12/4/2021
Total items in store: 3029 (down from 3543 — mostly due to the inventory consolidation mentioned above)
Items sold: 51 (30 via best offer, 9 via seller initiated offer, 1 repeat buyer)
Gross sales: $3057.86 (up 85% from one year ago)
Net sales: $2244.26 (up 101% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $6.27 — Luke Ridnour 2003 rookie basketball card numbered to 25
This buyer also bought a $40 listing which is what you always hope for with these low dollar sales. Luke Ridnour was a pretty average player, and that’s reflected in his card prices which rarely eclipse $50 regardless of how fancy the set or how many ornaments the card company decorates the cardboard with.
This was the type of card that I built my store on a few years ago when I started selling cards more — buy a big lot of cards for $50, sell a few of them for $10 to $20 and do it over and over again. Most of these cards go to buyers whose collecting interests are clearly reflected in their purchases, or their user name, or they live in the same state as a favorite team. These buyers focus on particular players and types of cards like autographs or certain serial numbered sets. But they are hard to retain as repeat buyers because they are so laser focused on these very specific wants, which are hard to find consistently. If I buy enough medium to large sized lots, I’ll usually find something worth selling, but will it be the specific Seattle Supersonics players serial numbered cards that this buyer wants? Probably not.
Now my process is a bit different. I buy 10 or 20 or 50 individual cards from the same seller for $1 to $100 each (spreading the shipping cost across multiple cards instead of 1 or 2), focusing on auctions that for whatever reasons don’t reach the level of previous sales. I try to keep my maximum bid at 1/3 of previous sales, but sometimes I’ll go a bit higher if it’s something particularly rare or it’s an especially hot player or team. Then I relist the cards buy it now or best offer and wait for the right buyer to come along or the right time to sell. This has led to a lot more time spent browsing auction listings, but it’s much more sustainable in terms of building a large inventory with more high dollar, popular items, some of which sell very quickly. There are a larger pool of buyers looking for an autograph of their team’s new hot player or a numbered rookie of the superstar who just signed a big free agent contract. Repeat this across all the different sports and teams, and that’s how and why the card industry is still relevant today.
Highest price sold (net): $295.57 — Obi Toppin 1/1 2020 rookie basketball card
An interesting contrast to the low priced sale of the week. It really shows how different card collecting is now. I bought this card in June, during the basketball off-season, for about $50 from an auction listing that didn’t have a very good title and I remember that it also ended at a weird time, like 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon.
In the era of bid snipers (I highly recommend Gixen, if anyone is curious), auction ending time shouldn’t affect final bid prices much, but my non-scientific theory is that it really does. There are still a lot of eBay users who are very casual, and only browse once in a while for what they want, not every day. And they are not checking eBay on Tuesday afternoons, that’s for sure!
I knew $50 would be a bargain price because 1/1 rookie cards are particularly prized among collectors, since unlike the regular base card (which has thousands printed) or other generic versions, there is only 1 of each particular 1/1 style. Some are often quite neat looking in terms of the aesthetics, and might contain an autograph or unique piece of the jersey like the team’s logo. Granting that every sport has 30 to 50 different sets, and most sets have multiple styles of 1/1s, so players often have dozens if not hundreds of 1/1s. But I digress…
The other reason I bought this card is that Obi Toppin was the first round pick of the New York Knicks last year. So, a top prospect for a popular team. One year into his professional basketball journey, he’s looked like most rookie athletes — some games he’s amazing, others he barely gets the ball and makes mistakes. I’m not surprised this card sold now since a lot of articles are clamoring for Toppin to get a chance in the starting lineup since the Knicks are not living up to expectations.
The buyer of the card had a user ID that was something like “financebro420” (not exactly but you get the idea) and the negotiation was quick and painless. I had the card listed for $400, the buyer offered $350 and I couldn’t hit accept fast enough. I sent the buyer a few other Knicks cards, which I do with almost every purchase under $50 but not usually the high dollar ones. I figure that anyone who spends hundreds on a sports card probably doesn’t care about my silly 50 cent extras. But with the holidays coming, I figured a finance bro might get a fat year end bonus, and maybe they’ll appreciate the freebies and save me as a seller. Plus, I have a few other Toppin cards still listed in my store. Probably time to raise those prices a few bucks just in case…
I know for sure that private coupons can stack with offers or markdown sales. My last markdown sale ended November 21st, so I didn’t have one coinciding with the public coupon this past weekend, but I might stack a markdown in the future with a public coupon to see how it goes.
Something else I noticed from using the public coupon was that a few buyers who submitted initial best offers of around 15 to 25 percent off my price eventually just bought at my buy it now price and used the 10% coupon code. So it eliminated some of the back and forth of offer and counteroffer, and was easy enough from a buyer’s perspective that the sale happened. Any time there are less “Offer expired” notifications, that’s always a good thing.
@debitendcredits
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed my post. The accountability of writing these posts every week has helped keep me on track this year, and it’s fun to try and translate my knowledge in a way that makes sense to people who aren’t card experts. With all the money that’s spent on modern cards, I am sure that some of you will find them “in the wild” at random estate sales and flea markets in the near future. My hope is that my posts will allow you to separate the junk cards from what’s more valuable and make a few bucks (or more) on something you would have otherwise passed by.
One of my scavenger goals for 2022 is to apply the knowledge I’ve learned from your posts and so many others in this community to expand beyond my niche when it makes sense. I love thrift stores and flea markets but I could never build a business on my finds there. Tried and failed for a couple years, in fact. But now I have a sustainable pipeline, and I can afford to supplement the cards with weird gewgaws and random finds and see what works and what doesn’t.
I am really excited to see the debut of your YouTube channel. I have never really found an eBay or scavenging podcast that held my interest in the same way that Scavenger Life did. There are even a few sports card focused podcasts (in my opinion the best one is Wax Museum) that should reel me in as a listener, but I listen to one or two episodes and go back to other stuff I like better.
I think it’s because most podcasts are designed to be entertaining storytelling, rather than process or method based. When I work on my eBay business, I like to be in a mindset of analyzing and improving my processes so I can fully enjoy the benefits (time and financial flexibility) of doing this full-time. That’s just one of the many things that made this podcast so meaningful to me, and I assume so many of us still posting here. I’ve noticed that the podcasts I returned to again and again have some kind of mental health discussion or theme, even if they’re technically about sports, or creativity, or comedy, or whatever, and usually it leads to a tightly knit community because most people just don’t talk about self-care or all these other taboo subjects.
I love the way you break down your posts, and you find such interesting items often at incredible prices. The outcomes are fun to read about, but I’m sure there is a ton of knowledge behind your processes which lead to your great sales and scavenges, and it will be great to hear more about those things.
Two weeks of numbers from me since I missed last week. It is getting cold here in New Jersey, which means a nice opportunity to work through some death piles and reorganize inventory. I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and here’s to a great December.
11/21/2021 – 11/28/2021
Total items in store: 3543 (up from 3505)
Items sold: 63 (40 via best offer, 8 via seller initiated offer, 3 repeat buyers)
Gross sales: $2780.33 (up 92% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1903.88 (up 96% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $9.45 — Nick Margevicius Topps independence day parallel
Every card company does different variations (or parallels) of the base card using different colors or designs, and often these parallels contain an individual serial number indicating its rarity. These independence day parallels, which Topps has been doing for a few years, are each numbered to 76. The card I sold was an uninteresting player, and almost any other serial number except #17/76 would go for $2 or less. But this one was #17/76. I can understand why a collector might shell out $10 for that particular serial number, even if it is a little kitschy for my taste.
Highest price sold (net): $104.34 — Curtis Jones gold prizm
Premium soccer cards have only become an option in the last 3-4 years, so almost every new set has designs or players that are popular or become popular within a few months of release. I’m not a big soccer fan (in fact I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full soccer match), so it’s been a fun challenge over the last year to learn about all of the different players and teams. Plus every sale is an opportunity to learn which cards sell quickly and for high prices. This one proved particularly special as it had 25 watchers and 20+ offers by the time it sold. I actually raised the price twice before it sold. The player and team are quite popular and prizm is a pretty iconic set in modern cards, with gold prizms (usually serial numbered to 10) especially popular.
A year ago, I’m sure I had less than 100 soccer cards in my inventory. Today I’m at 350 and growing. Even though most of the best soccer (and soccer cards) are based around European teams and leagues, a lot of my buyers are American. Maybe soccer is more popular in the States than I think, or more likely it’s simply another type of card for collectors and dealers to buy and sell and make (or lose) money on. I would also guess that the early pandemic introduced a lot of fans to soccer, and collectors to soccer cards, and some of those are still around 18+ months later.
11/14/2021 – 11/20/2021
Items sold: 53 (33 via best offer, 12 via seller initiated offer, 1 repeat buyer)
Gross sales: $2722.19 (up 57% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1829.09 (up 67% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $8.55 — Doug Nikhazy autograph jersey
Nikhazy was an extremely successful college pitcher for the Ole Miss Rebels who just started his minor league career this past year. The buyer was located in Mississippi and left a nice feedback about how much her grandson was going to love the card. Cool grandma!
Highest price sold (net): $253.62 — Giancarlo Stanton Topps Chrome blue refractor autograph rookie card
This is one of the nicer (colorful, good set, serial numbered) autograph rookies of one of the best players on the New York Yankees. It’s an unusual sale as I bought the card for less during the season and sold it for higher during baseball’s offseason. Usually prices dip during the offseason.
If you click on the link, you will see why. The name on the card is “Mike Stanton” which is the name the player used his first two years in the big leagues. Then he changed his name after a trip to Europe (good article if you’re curious why) and the rest, as they say, is history.
But his old cards will say Mike Stanton, always and forever, and every few months I come across a valuable one which only has Mike Stanton in the title because that’s what’s on the card. Sometimes those listings sell for a good price anyway. More often, like with my initial purchase of this card, they don’t sell as well as you might expect based on previous sales history of similar cards until they’re listed correctly.
While I don’t know this for sure, my theory is that my buyer who spent $300+ on this card didn’t care about finding their card for a good deal or waiting for the right one to come along or searching “Mike Stanton” “autograph, auto” chrome. They decided to buy a Giancarlo Stanton autographed rookie, had a budget in mind and perhaps a type of card, and they came across my listing and clicked buy it now. Such a different mindset than how scavengers approach things, but I’m thankful for buyers like this all year long. They often make my week.
No huge sales this week, but still a steady stream of sales and enough to pay the bills and bring in a lot of new inventory. Can’t ask for anything more than that.
I’m interested to see how busy our eBay stores get over the next few weeks. I’m hopeful that we’ll see a nice eBay bucks promo, or even a coupon, for Black Friday next week.
11/7/2021 – 11/13/2021
Total items in store: 3505 (up from 3438)
Items sold: 53 (25 via best offer, 16 via seller initiated offer, 2 repeat buyers)
Gross sales: $2404.07 (up 51% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1667.23 (up 62% from one year ago)
Lowest price sold (net): $8.19 — Hoy Park Bowman Chrome 1st autograph
One of the interesting things about selling on eBay is that it connects you with buyers all over the world. In the card world, this is especially important since there is a pretty robust market for cards in Asia. Basketball cards (especially the rare valuable inserts from the 1990s) reach particularly wild prices, but on a more reasonable scale, there is a nice market for Asian players in all sports who make the pros in US sports leagues. Hoy Park is a South Korean player who was traded from the Yankees to the Pirates this year, and received his first opportunity in the big leagues. There was a brief flurry of interest when he played his first few games, but other than that prices vary and fluctuate, and it’s easy to make a few bucks on players like him simply by buying low and waiting for the right buyer.
Highest price sold (net): $113.44 — Mike Mussina 1/1 Topps Archives autograph
Topps Archives is one of the modern sets where you receive just 1 card, an autograph, in each box. Your card’s value is entirely based in the quality of player and serial number. Mike Mussina was an excellent and popular pitcher for the Yankees and Orioles in the 1990s, and his autographs hold value because of that.
I bought a pair of his 1/1 Archives autographs on Reddit a few months ago from someone who opened a ton of boxes of the product and made a lot of posts selling them off. My first and probably only purchase on Reddit. I paid less than $100 for the pair, and sold each one for over $100. It’s strange that so many card buyers and sellers are opposed to using eBay when that’s where the most buyers are, but I’m happy to make a few bucks in the process. From what I understand, there is a lot of card selling activity on other social media platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram. But I try and avoid social media as much as possible for mental health reasons. Even if there’s profit there, I’m happier sticking with eBay.
